


Setting the Stage

by MYuzuki



Series: Tales of a Nabradian Hunter [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen, Major Original Character(s), POV Original Character, establishing the premise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MYuzuki/pseuds/MYuzuki
Summary: If someone were to ask Kaia where her story began, she would answer Nabudis.
Series: Tales of a Nabradian Hunter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2038138
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Setting the Stage

**Author's Note:**

> Oh look, I'm starting another self-indulgent drabbles series. Is anyone even surprised? I think probably not. ;D

**Setting the Stage**

* * *

If someone were to ask Kaia where her story began, she would answer Nabudis.

The world being what it was, they would assume that she meant the fall of Nabudis, that she was another Nabradian refugee set adrift by the Archadian Empire's war of conquest.

They would, perhaps, be technically correct. She was Nabradian, and she had been set adrift by the utter destruction of her homeland.

But that day when the heavens had exploded in a searing blast of magickal energy was not when her story had begun. No, for her it began farther back. Much farther back.

About twenty-four years farther back, to be exact.

For her, it began in a marketplace, when a hunter woman by the name of Aesa caught the eye of a man named Solvarr, a man who happened to not be just any man but the king.

It had apparently caused quite a scandal when the King of Nabradia had wed a monster-slaying peasant woman instead of a noblewoman, and the birth of their daughter had caused more discomfort still, for how could a child of such common blood possibly be worthy to sit upon the Nabradian throne?

And so when that common-born wife had suddenly taken ill and passed away with little warning a scant two years after that controversial marriage, few of the nobles in Nabradia had truly grieved her death.

And so the King, now a widower and facing pressure to re-marry, sent away the young child from his first marriage, giving her to her mother's brother, who spirited her away to the wilderness, to teach her the ways of a hunter, so she could be as her mother before her.

And so Kaia had been raised as a hunter, never knowing the truth about her father.

At least, never knowing…until her sixteenth year, when -faced with too much evasiveness and half-answers from her uncle- she had demanded the full truth, had finally learned that her birth father was not some traveling merchant who had run out on her mother as she'd been told all her life, but the king of her nation.

It had been, suffice it to say, a very tumultuous year for her, the revelation shaking her down to the foundations of her soul. But she'd gotten through it, and had gotten through the years that had followed as well.

Until the fall of Nabudis, when it had all gone so horribly wrong.

But she'd survived that, through a combination of luck and her uncle's skill at healing magick, and even though it had taken her the better part of a year to recover (and that wasn't including the months she'd spent unconscious and dead to the world before that) she'd come through it physically intact, if not emotionally whole.

And now?

Now it's been two years. Two years since the destruction of Nabudis, two years since the death of her half-brother Rasler, who she'd met only a handful of times over the years but had loved dearly despite that.

Two years since Archadia had all but erased her homeland, two years since they had left the shattered remnants of Nabudis behind and turned their sights to their sister kingdom of Dalmasca, two years since they had forced the once-proud desert kingdom into an unconditional surrender after the sudden murder of King Raminas during a treaty signing.

She's always been suspicious of that, personally; the timing had been far too convenient for the public version of events to be the truth. But she's nothing more than a hunter; a touch of royal blood in her veins or not, she's in no position to do anything at all other than focus on her own survival and help out her countrymen when she can.

And so her story goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway, as you probably surmised from this preliminary drabble, this series will focus on original character Kaia, a Nabradian hunter (who also happens to be Rasler's half-sister, which was actually not what I originally had planned for her but the potential angst factor was too much for me to resist lol). Mostly this series happened because we never actually get to learn much about Nabradia in general in the main game (and we likewise know nothing about Rasler beyond "he married Ashe", nothing about Nabradian royalty beyond the fact that Rasler's father was King and just...nothing about Nabradia, really, beyond what happened at Nabudis. We don't even get to meet any Nabradian characters, aside from the petitioners for certain hunts. And you all know how much I love to write things when there's so much untapped narrative potential, so here we are! In any case, this drabble series will consist of a combination of Hunt Stuff and Plot Stuff (and yes, Kaia will eventually cross paths with the main game characters eventually. There's just...oodles of stuff that she has to suffer through first, haha).


End file.
